A recently captured Iraqi national with deep ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps allegedly pledged to assassinate Ivanka Trump, and obtained a blueprint of her Florida home, in a revenge plot tied to the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, the New York Post reported exclusively.
Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, was arrested in Turkey on May 15 and extradited to the United States, where the Department of Justice has charged him with 18 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the U.S. He now sits in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
But the charges only scratch the surface. Sources told the Post that Al-Saadi made a direct "pledge" to kill Ivanka Trump and had acquired a plan of her Florida residence, the $24 million home she shares with husband Jared Kushner. The threat was not abstract. It was operational, personal, and driven by a desire to strike at the Trump family itself.
Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché at the Iraqi embassy in Washington and now president of the Future Foundation, a nonprofit focused on U.S.-Iraqi Kurdish alliances, described the motive in blunt terms. He told the Post:
"After Qasem was killed, he [Al-Saadi] went around telling people 'we need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house.'"
Qanbar said he had heard that Al-Saadi possessed a plan of Ivanka's home in Florida. A second source also confirmed the assassination plot to the Post.
Al-Saadi went further on social media. He posted a picture on X showing a map of the Florida enclave where Ivanka lives, alongside a threat written in Arabic. Translated, it read: "I say to the Americans look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you. We are currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis. I told you, our revenge is a matter of time."
That is not the language of a disgruntled keyboard warrior. That is the language of someone conducting reconnaissance.
Al-Saadi is described as a high-ranking figure in Iraq-Iran terror circles and an operative of both Kata'ib Hizballah and Iran's IRGC. His personal connections ran straight to the top of Iran's paramilitary hierarchy.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Senior Fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based New Lines Institute, provided context on those connections. Tsurkov, who was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2023 and held hostage by Kata'ib Hezbollah for 903 days before her release in September 2025, told the Post that publicly available information showed Al-Saadi was a close friend of Soleimani himself.
"Publicly available information shows that Mohammad Baqer was in contact and a close friend of...Qasem Soleimani and that in and of itself is a huge coup for any operative within the ranks of these militias, and on top of that he was then close to [Esmail] Qaani who replaced Soleimani."
Tsurkov said Al-Saadi maintained a close relationship with Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, Soleimani's replacement, who continued to provide him with resources for his terror networks. She said she did not know if Al-Saadi was among her own kidnappers, as she only saw them masked.
Qanbar added that Al-Saadi grew up in Baghdad and was largely raised by his Iraqi mother, but was sent to Tehran to train with the IRGC. He looked up to Soleimani as a father figure after the death of his own father, Ahmad Kazemi, an Iranian brigadier general killed in 2006.
The DOJ indictment paints a picture of a man who did not confine his ambitions to talk. Al-Saadi is charged with orchestrating a broad campaign of violence against U.S. and Jewish targets. The firebombing of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam in March. The stabbing of two Jewish victims in London in April. A shooting at the U.S. consulate building in Toronto, also in March.
Federal prosecutors say he also "planned, coordinated" and allegedly took responsibility for the bombing of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, and the arson of a temple in Rotterdam in March, along with various other foiled attacks inside the United States tied to the current conflict in the Middle East.
Ivanka Trump, 44, converted to Orthodox Judaism in 2009 before her marriage to Kushner, a fact that placed her at the intersection of two of Al-Saadi's apparent motivations: revenge against the Trump family and hostility toward Jewish people. The White House did not respond to the Post's request for comment on the assassination plot. A lawyer for Al-Saadi also did not respond.
The scope of the alleged plot raises hard questions about how effectively the U.S. government screens and tracks known terror operatives before they reach American soil, questions that echo broader failures in public safety and immigration enforcement that have surfaced in recent years.
For an alleged senior terror operative, Al-Saadi was remarkably visible. His social media accounts show him posing next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, kayaking, and standing in front of a missile with his hand over his heart.
The federal indictment includes photos Al-Saadi posted to his own Snapchat account showing him consulting with Soleimani at what appears to be a military facility, poring over maps and equipment.
In August 2020, seven months after the Soleimani strike, Al-Saadi posted an image on X of Soleimani and another military figure killed in the same drone attack, held aloft by a militant carrying an AK-47. His caption, per court documents: "I will leave social media and turn off all my phones until the American enemy is defeated...victory or martyrdom."
The blackout did not last. In a 2025 post he described as his "last tweet," Al-Saadi referred to Soleimani and other Iranian military leaders killed in U.S. strikes as "martyrs." Court documents quote him writing:
"I address you while in great shock and intense weakness, a feeling I have never experience in my life except once, at the martyrdom of...Qasem Soleimani."
He also allegedly targeted potential victims directly through Snapchat messages, in many cases sending them a photograph of a pistol fitted with a silencer, messages seen by the Post showed.
When Turkish authorities arrested Al-Saadi on May 15, he was carrying an Iraqi service passport, a special travel document issued to government employees and civil servants, obtainable only with the consent of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Qanbar told the Post.
That passport gave Al-Saadi the ability to travel freely, pass through minimal or no security checks at Iraqi airports, and access VIP airport lounges. While he would still face screening at foreign airports, the document made obtaining visas to the countries where he allegedly planned attacks far easier. He was reportedly in transit to Russia when he was detained.
The existence of that passport raises a pointed question: How did a man charged with 18 terror attacks across multiple countries hold a government-issued travel document that requires prime ministerial approval? Either Iraqi officials knew who Al-Saadi was and looked the other way, or the vetting process for these documents is so hollow it amounts to an open invitation.
Al-Saadi now sits in solitary confinement at MDC Brooklyn alongside other high-profile detainees, including accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione and captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. He faces federal charges for the 18 attacks and attempted attacks outlined in the DOJ indictment. His alleged links extend to Kata'ib Hizballah, the IRGC, and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Al-Saadi later established a travel agency specializing in religious trips, a business Qanbar alleged served as cover, allowing him to move around the world and "connect with terror cells."
The case lays bare a network that stretched from Baghdad to Tehran to Amsterdam to London to Toronto to a quiet enclave in Florida. And at the center of it sat a man who posted selfies at tourist landmarks, bragged about his connections to dead Iranian generals on Snapchat, and allegedly walked through airports with a government passport while planning to assassinate a member of the president's family.
When a sworn enemy of the United States can operate that openly for that long, the question is not whether the system failed. It's how many others like him are still moving freely.
